This album has been a constant companion. There’s more than a touch of Angel Olsen both in the sound and the sentiment. “I can’t get you off my mind, you can’t get yours off the hostess”. The opening track, ‘Diving Woman’, is utterly compelling, but there’s much more than that. Try ‘Boyish’ and ‘The Body Is a Blade’ for starters.

John Murry seems to have lived more than one life already. He catalogued at least one of them in his harrowing, but magnificent previous release, ‘The Graceless Age‘. Five years on, the memories are still raw and they’re present on his new release. But in between John Murry has upped sticks and made a new start in rural Ireland. ‘A Short History of Decay’ captures both the bad times and the recent turn for the better and all in the manner of a dark Americana.

An erudite songwriter with rollickingly good tunes, Robyn Hitchcock is a legend. From Virginia Woolf to The Ramones, all of human life is here. Or the quirky and interesting bits at least. There’s ‘Mad Shelley’s Letterbox’, ‘Detective Mindhorn’, and a host of other characters in between. And just when you think it can’t get any better, there’s always the sublime closer, ‘Time Coast’.